Parasites in their Mind
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: When the Maebaras left Himazawa, they took with them their son's dead body and parasites in their mind.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, H50 – write a post-canon fic. This is technically post-arc instead of the entire canon, but HIgurashi's multiple timelines make it possible to continue one of the earlier arcs and still call it post.

* * *

 **Parasites in their Mind**  
 _Chapter 1_

Acute heart failure. As if something like that could just come out of the blue after he'd been kidnapped, strapped to a torture table and stunned with a stun gun, rescued, and then stabbed in the stomach. Not that he should have gone through any of those things. Hinamizawa was supposed to have been a new start for all of them. A place away from shadowed crimes. Away from blood.

It turned out the only thing they'd managed to escape was the stress of schooling, and they'd paid a steep price for it. They were taking Keiichi back to the city in a body bag.

Acute heart failure. Neither of them could really grasp it, believe it. It wasn't as though Keiichi had a pre-existing medical condition to precipitate it – and yet they'd been barred from visiting for the two days in between the surgery and the death. First it was the police saying they absolutely had to see him first, and then it was the doctors panicking about something. But the result was that. Declared dead on July 3, 1983. Cause of death: acute heart failure. Doctor Irie wore a sorrowful expression but explained no more than that.

They couldn't believe, and yet they had no choice but to believe it. Because their son's body was spread out in the hospital bed for them to see, and there was no denying that.

The Maebara family was forced to move away from Hinamizawa three days after they'd intended to, and without their son sitting across from them.

 **.**

The long ride had given them a lot of time to mourn, and think, and argue with the cold fact that faced them. Ichirou had even weakly joked that he'd claw his way out of the body bag and yell at whatever idiot came up with the idea of zipping him in there, but no such miracle occurred. When they arrived, almost dark, at the house they'd brought only a week prior and near their remaining relatives, Aiko's face was heavily stained with tear tracks and Ichirou's arms shook as he helped the driver with their precious cargo.

Thankfully, his cousin came to help and took that burden away.

The body bag was taken first, put into the bed in the largest room. The other room didn't yet have a bed, but it didn't matter. They wouldn't sleep that night anyhow. They wouldn't sleep for a few nights, probably, until exhaustion won over all else. But this night was different. While the large cities had discarded a good deal of the old traditions, some remained. And places like Hinamizawa clung to them all.

They had mixed feelings about that, but tragedy had befallen them in the city as well so they could not put blame to that place. Not then at least. Not when their raw wounds still bled. Where tears ran out, it was burning eyes and scratching dry faces instead. The cousin found himself coaxing Aiko's hand away from her cheek where it had drawn a thin line of blood. But he could offer little comfort otherwise. He couldn't take the tragedy away, nor the burden. He didn't know the details; they were details shared with no-one. He only know a child had died before his parents. A young, bright child who'd had his entire future ahead of him. A child part of his extended family.

But the world didn't pause when tragedy struck. Not for the Maebaras, anyhow. The extended family came together to mourn, dressed in black for the tsuya, carrying juzu beads and their condolences, and joined Ichirou and Aiko in kneeling by the bed.

It was the prelude to their son's funeral and their housewarming as well.

 **.**

Ryugu Rena was the only one of Keiichi's friends still alive, and they'd planned to invite her to the funeral. They'd forgotten how long it would take for her to get to the city from Hinamizawa. It had turned out to be a non-issue though. Hinamizawa was sealed after an eruption of volcanic gas and its two thousand inhabitants were considered dead.

It was horrific, but they stood in the midst of their own tragedy. Aiko wondered if she should be grateful or enraged at the twist of fate that had forced her husband and herself from Hinamizawa before its annihilation. And after the delay as well. One more day and they too would have been choked to death with sulphur gas and ash. Then they wouldn't have needed to mourn. And they couldn't even say leaving had saved their son because it hadn't. They couldn't say leaving earlier would have saved him either, because they simply didn't know that.

If he'd died from complications of his stomach wound, then they could have said for sure. But not something unrelated.

And they didn't have the energy to mourn the place they'd fled from. They couldn't mourn the only friend there Keiichi still had left. They couldn't think of the complexities that had driven them to their hasty departure, delayed. They could only watch as the body was bathed and robed and placed in the dry ice in the casket. They put only spiced pork flavoured ramen from the personal items. Things had changed too drastically of late for them to know what else would ease his passing. Reminders of the city, or Hinamizawa, both soaked in the blood and stale air of their tragedies. Reminders of his friends, all dead, some insane. Reminders of the city, of those things that had driven them to HInimizawa in the first place – and driven the smile of Keiichi's face.

Maybe if he'd died with the smile HInamizawa had given him, it would have been easier to bear. Maybe if his expression had looked even a little bit peaceful – but it hadn't been that at all. Pained. Frightened. Those were the sorts of words they could use to describe. Those were the sort of words they didn't want to use to describe – but was a lie any better? Could they truly convince themselves Keiichi had died happy, had died fulfilled? If he'd had kids and grandchildren and lived to the ripe old age of ninety, then maybe. Even if he'd been expecting to die, then maybe. But to survive trials like what he survived only to die spontaneously in the aftermath? It was too mindboggling. They simply could not grasp it.

Not even when the coffin was nailed shut. Not even when they sat on the stone steps of the temple for an hour, watching the smoke colour the cloudy sky a little darker. Not even when Aiko's hands reached shakenly for the first bones, for the feet and almost dropped it when Ichirou's chopsticks struck the side of the urn with a clatter. Another relative stepped forth to take them. Ichirou allowed them to pick the chopsticks up, but he was the one who accepted the bone from the foot and transferred it to the urn – and the other bones that followed.

It was a long, slow process. Aiko's hands shook less with each bone she picked up, and Ichirou did not drop the chopsticks again. Maybe it was the ritual: so profound they couldn't deny what it presented them. Maybe it was because their son's body was now ash and bones, and the time they too would vanish from sight was soon approaching. Or maybe it was simply the passage of time. A dull despair clung to the both of them now.

And it stayed with them, like a heavy stone on their backs, as the urn was placed in the grave and the monument put in place.

 **.**

The extended family drifted away, but they were slow to do so. They'd been together like this not too long ago – just over a month, or maybe it was just under. Two funerals so close together caused the days in between them to blur. The other death had been a grand-uncle to some of them, uncle to others. Grand-uncle to Keiichi as well, and the Maebaras had come from Hinamizawa for it. Two days, and Ichirou and Aiko had smiled at how tired Keiichi looked the Monday after, returning to school. And yet there'd been a small smile on his face. He'd been happy to be back in Hinamizawa. Happy to be going to school, to meet his friends. Even after a funeral he'd been able to smile, when a normal day would have had a tight expression on his face.

What had been so wrong about hoping they would last? What had been so wrong about despairing when they'd, in a matter of days, crumbled. First, it had been the photographer and the nurse from the clinic dead. Then the village elder had disappeared. Then two of Keiichi's friends disappeared. Then Keiichi and another of his friends disappeared – and when he turned up again, it was bound to a torture table and unconscious with another girl in a dark cold cell.

But the perpetrator was dead. That was what the police had said. The perpetrator's body had been found on top of her victims. The other girl had locked herself in her home. Perhaps the prison, after being locked in that underground cell for days, had been too much for her. She'd jumped from her balcony the day before Keiichi's death.

That…was like a run-on after the story had finished. The enemy had been caught. The remaining characters should have lived happily ever after once they'd healed – but they never had the chance to heal. The ones who would get the happily ever after ending were the relatives attending the funeral. The ones paying their respects to the newly erected grave and promising to return for the shōnanoka in a week's time.

 _Seven days to get through before that_ , Ichirou thought heavily. He sunk to his knees at the foot of the grave and put his head in his hands. And he didn't notice when he started scratching at the scalp.


	2. Chapter 2

**Parasites in their Mind**  
 _Chapter 2_

Ichirou stirred restlessly. It had been near impossible to get to sleep but sheer necessity had demanded it. But even when lying in bed, that sleep did not come. Beside him, Aiko had a pained expression on her face, her eyelids flickering. It seemed even in dreams she couldn't escape the sorrow that leaked from her heart.

Maybe it was seeing that expression that made his own body so reluctant to surrender to a similar fate. There was enough sadness now, awake; they didn't need it plaguing them while they slept as well. But what choice was there if their bodies were so unkind? He was restless now, but eventually he would collapse the demons descend.

He brushed the word away. Hinamizawa had been their home for a few months only but its ways had been deeply engraved into them. The talk of demons, of being spirited away, of the god that killed once a year and no-one in the village seemed to believe it was a cover-up for a human hand. And they'd lived in ignorance amongst it. Ignorant until Keiichi had been carried out of the Sonozaki's estate on a stretcher. Not even when the elder, Kimiyoshi, had vanished without a trace and the villagers had searched through the night and the morning for him. Not even when Rika and Satoko had disappeared and nobody thought it suspicious. Because everybody was out looking. Everybody was panicking. Their friends had been the most worried – so who would have thought it was one of them after all of that?

It was the sort of thing tragic dramas were made of. The naïve protagonist. The devil in sheep's clothing until she rips them off. The innocent bystanders that get swept up in it all, leaving only one survivor, one to tell the tale.

But someone had miscalculated somewhere because Ryugu Rena had been the last of them and she was dead as well, along with the rest of Hinamizawa. Unless that Satoshi boy Keiichi had mentioned once was alive somewhere. It was hard to say. Another secret tucked away in HInamizawa. A secret that may now never be solved.

He only thought about things because there wasn't much else to think about. He was exhausted. Keiichi's face blurred: all those things that were always there blurred. Instead, he remembered the little things now, made clearer in the fog. Inconsequential things. Things that brought only more sadness, more grief, more regret. All the things they'd missed. All the things they'd naively accepted. All the things they'd thought they'd been so thorough in but they hadn't, in the end, at all.

The room slowly darkened. Aiko, twitched, jerked, then rolled onto her other side, facing the wall. He rolled over too. The curtains fluttered gently but even with the open window and no blankets, the room was hot. Maybe it was all the incense. Maybe it was some fever taking root.

And then the curtains parted as though someone swept them aside. But nothing came through. No particularly strong gust of wind. No suspicious figure attempting to gain entry. He slid out of bed and went to the window anyway. It was another distraction. Another proof of his reluctance.

There was nothing out the window. The thin branches barely swayed in the light summer breeze. But he could hear the wind nonetheless. The wind…and the sound of children laughing in the street. The street was well lit though: yellow lamps shone down and illuminated grey asphalt coloured black by the night. There was a car parked in front of the house across from them, but no people. No young children.

He turned away from the window, then jerked back to it when he heard a scream: a young girl's scream. There was no-one there again. Nothing that gave a hint, nothing that drew his eyes. He was hearing things.

He stumbled back into bed and closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep again. The doorbell rang before he could truly manage it.

 **.**

The days trudged on. Mourners came and went, thinning by the day but not by much. They were all family, after all. Extended family. They'd left all their friends behind: first from the city, then from Hinamizawa – and those from Hinamizawa were dead and buried themselves now. Ichirou and Aiko fluxed between cycles of coping and not. How were they supposed to heal that wound? Ichirou tried to do what he always did when he was stressed. He painted. But his son was just a blurry face and he crumpled the paper and through it.

There was an unexpected cry of pain. 'I'm sorry,' Ichirou said, almost mechanically. He hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings. He looked now; there was no-one there, just the crumpled bit of paper edged with blood.

Paper wasn't strong as a weapon. It could cause papercuts and surprise when lobbed across a room but not much else. A toll of bullying, a tool of accidents – a tool for words and images and not much more. Toys were much the same, but a toy had turned into a drug and a weapon and had frightened parents out at night. Had hurt a little girl. Had driven their son to joy at others' fear, then horror at the blood. Had revealed the cracks he'd been hiding under clothes for that long.

How was anything different then? Even the most innocuous thing, like his paper. Could someone throw it hard enough to draw blood, he wondered. It must be possible, because the proof was right in front of him.

 **.**

The first time Aiko burst into tears, she said nothing as to the cause. Ichirou tried to embrace her but it felt cold. They weren't a distant family. They rarely were. Sometimes, he had to travel for his art. Sometimes, Aiko came along. Sometimes, Keiichi was left alone – but it was far more dramatic this time when they knew they couldn't just go home and see him again. This was his new home, their new home, and the master bedroom stank of incense that would probably never air out. Not that they gave it the chance. They covers, the carpet – the stayed in the room. They'd been there when they brought the house and they'd stayed. Aiko and Ichirou had moved into the other room, meant for the child. They no longer had one to give it to.

The next time, Aiko dropped the knife she'd been cooking with. Ichirou, who'd had his head down on the table, lifted himself. 'Are you okay?'

'Just…' Her voice was almost breathless. 'I thought I felt something. A chill.' She looked down at herself. Her finger was lightly cut. She stared at it with a blank expression, then washed it under the faucet. 'Just not sleeping well, I think.' She smiled tightly.

Ichirou nodded. He hadn't been sleeping well either. It was either the noise at night that kept him up, or the nightmares when he surrendered to sleep – and he'd been right. There were nightmares. For the both of them.

 **.**

Keiichi's face was covered with blood.

It shouldn't be. He'd died of internal causes. Acute heart failure.

It was unbelievable. It was a lie.

The doctors had told what they'd seen, what they'd diagnosed.

The doctors had lied. They were in on the conspiracy as well. The one that everyone had tried to hide. About the festival. About the deaths. About the gas leak that had killed them all in the end, allowing them to take the secret to the grave with them.

He'd died of heart failure.

His eyes were wide open in terror. His face was covered in blood.

They'd only seen him when the eyes were closed.

They were open now, hollow, milky grey, staring – And there was still blood pouring out from the neck.

It was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. He reminded himself. The body was cremated. Buried. He'd put the bones in the urn himself. Aiko had handed them to him, one by one, her hands shaking, her heart growing heavier with each one. And the ash at the bottom… How could there still be blood? It was a nightmare. Definitely a nightmare. And no matter how many times he had it, he forgot when he was caught in there again.

'Your nightmares?' he would ask Aiko, afterwards. His face looked as tight and pale as hers, he supposed. His eyes just as bloodshot.

'Not like yours,' Aiko would say in return, but she wouldn't elaborate.

She was hiding something, Ichirou would start to think, sometimes. But it was ridiculous. What could they hide in this state? But she was hiding something.

He tried to draw another picture. Not his son. Maybe the street at night. He watched it long enough. He heard the giggles again. He'd drawn a girl he didn't recognise, and a shadow sneaking up on her from behind.

When the giggle turned into a shriek, he understood. And he threw the paper and the brushes and listened to them hit something outside.


	3. Chapter 3

**Parasites in their Mind**  
 _Chapter 3_

It took a while to meet the neighbours. They realised something tragic had befallen them. They saw the cars coming and going. They'd seen the procession on the funeral day. They saw the always drawn in the master bedroom. They took their time, not wanting to swarm the pair at once and the Maebaras were grateful. They waited out the first week, then came one by one on the second. They brought little dishes, and their own incense. They came to pay respect to someone they didn't even now.

It wasn't the welcome to the neighbourhood they'd expected when they'd made the hasty plan to move, but the accepted the well wishes. Kind neighbours, they were. Not asking too many uncomfortable questions. Murmuring their condolences. They sent empty ones back with one: their cat had a stroke or something and died.

And then one day the policeman came, and that was a very different visit.

 **.**

Detective Oiishi was an uncomfortable man. Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn't. He didn't believe the story about the demons, about being spirited away. Convenient cover ups, he muttered. He was disappointed in the destruction of Hinamizawa because it was unlikely they would ever unravel the true cause.

'You can't think we really care,' Ichirou said tiredly, when the man repeated all of this. 'We are not a part of wherever conspiracy it was. We were outsiders.'

'I wonder about that.' And the grin was uncomfortable as well. 'I came about something related, actually. You heard about that gas leak in Hinamizawa?'

He nodded. Aiko nodded as well, though her eyes were focused elsewhere. Her hands fidgeted under the sleeves.

'We've heard there've been a few disturbing…incidents following. From families who'd previously lived in Hinamizawa.'

He regarded the two of them carefully as he said that. Neither of them flinched. Neither of them were as invested as they perhaps should had been – but what could disturb them now? The fog of incense and grief was still a thick blanket around the black of them, fed by whispers in the wind and nightmares and reminders wherever they looked, even in this new house in which Keiichi had never walked.

Oiishi looked a little put out at not being asked the leading question. Nonetheless, he answered it. 'They've been going on…murder sprees, shall we say? Quite similarly to Sonozaki Mion.'

'So you're saying we should blame some...impulse going around for our son's death?' Aiko smiled tiredly. 'But no. It wasn't because of that in the end, was it?'

'No.' Oiishi regarded the two of them. 'Perhaps not. I don't pretend to understand the language of doctors and I can't say I like that particular one very much.'

He was trying to open a can of worms. Or a coffin that had been nailed shut. They could sense it. They didn't want it. 'We haven't had any homicidal tendencies if that was what you wanted to know,' Ichirou said abruptly, draining his cup of tea.

'No?' This time, Oiishi quirked an eyebrow. 'What if I told you I'm the reason your son went into the Sonozaki estate?'

Ichirou stood up. There was a crash somewhere, and a vase lay shattered on the coffee table. Aiko's eyes were closed. Ichirou plopped back onto the couch. The vase had been on the mantle. Who'd thrown it? It was only the three of them in the house and they were all around the coffee table.

'You were also the reason he came out of the Sonozaki estate,' Aiko said. Her eyes flickered open. She stared at the pieces of the vase and then closed her eyes again, taking a deep breath before adding: 'But he…died anyway. It's hard to believe. Sometimes, I don't want to believe.'

'It's a nightmare of a tragedy.' Oiishi rubbed his arm. 'I'm sorry to digging things up. You understand it's my job to stop things like this – though I'm afraid I'm doing an awful job of it right now.'

They didn't comfort him. He was an enigma and an uncomfortable man: enemy or ally. And his job wasn't with the dead. It was with the living. The untouched.

They hadn't asked what happened to the afflicted ones. But they were far from Hinamizawa now so it didn't matter.

 **.**

Ichirou woke up one night and Aiko wasn't in bed beside him.

That was unusual. Usually it was the other way around: Ichirou spent most of his time out of bed and Aiko would be tossing and turning, trying to escape a dream but never quite managing it. Often she scratched herself in her sleep. Often it left pink marks that faded by morning. Sometimes it drew blood. There was a smudge of pink on her pillow but she wasn't there beside it.

He'd left the window open and she was staring out through it with a bit of a smile on his face.

When he sat up, she turned to him. 'Keiichi likes the yard,' she said. 'It's spacious. Lots of room to play baseball in.'

They hadn't played much baseball in HInamizawa. There was a team there, the Hinamizawa Fighters. Keiichi helped them out once, but that was it. And that had been against someone he couldn't shine against.

Such an open place, at the time. There were so many things they could have done but didn't, not realising one day it would be too late.

Ichirou closed his eyes again. Aiko was still at the window. Someone was giggling. She'd be able to see them. He wouldn't have to worry. Nothing would make a child scream with a spectator –

But she screamed anyway, and Ichirou was too deep in sleep by then to wrench himself out, to he tried.

 **.**

'Your throat is scratched,' Aiko said that morning. She wrapped it up for him. So was hers, but she said it wasn't deep and could be left alone. She tended to know better about those things. Mother's intuition, or something similar. He let her have her way.

They drank tea and bread soaked in and tried with the fruit as well, but it was too sweet. Almost a bitter sweetness: unpalatable.

Aiko decided to go for a walk after that. 'I need some air,' she said. And she was pale and unsteady, and looked as though she really did.

Ichirou said he'd be fine watching the house. She'd watched it alone when he tried to draw. It was hopeless though. Crumpled papers that always seemed to hit something. He was imagining it, he thought sometimes. It was like those toy bullets, he thought at others, even though he wasn't aiming at anyone at all. Even if he didn't see anyone, he could hear the sound of it hitting something solid, and the shriek after it.

The shriek was unpalatable, but the sound of it hitting something…

Thoughtfully, he took out his baseball bat and ball. They really only had the one, and they'd take turns with it. It was easy to buy another, but with Keiichi not particularly interested in playing for a team, they hadn't bothered. It was supposed to have been relaxing. A father-son bonding experience. Something like that. At some point that thought had drifted away. Keiichi had chosen to shoot at a card-box box with a toy gun instead of smacking balls against a wall.

He hit the ball gently against the wall. It made a satisfying thump and there was no feedback shriek. He hit it again, and again. A window shattered but he didn't notice. His eyes didn't leave the ball. White. Bouncing to and fro.

Then there was a startled shriek and he let it drop. 'Aiko?'

She was standing in the doorway, staring at the window. He stared as well.

'Did – you break the window?' Her collar was high, almost up to her chin. Then she half-smiled. 'I know it wasn't Keiichi.'

Usually, it was Keiichi who hit the ball and broke something. But Keiichi wasn't there. Keiichi would never be there.

He couldn't forget that.

 **.**

Sometimes, she could forget that. That Keiichi wasn't there. Sometimes she saw his shadow disappearing around a corner, heard his laughter through the door or the open window. He was always outside. Sometimes his voice was with other laughs. Female laughs. Almost familiar laughs. The friends of his that had vanished, that had died. It was easy to forget that as well, listening to them life.

But then there was the incense, the grave marker, the sheer emptiness when those images faded, that woke her up again. Sometimes, she knew it was coming: a cold draft would blow over her, and the laughter would start to fade, the shadow would slip around a corner and disappear. And she'd try to follow it. She'd try to chase it but she was too slow. It would be gone and she had to accept that unbelievable reality again.

When she saw the broken window she saw Keiichi too, outside, laughing. He didn't have a bat: it was just him, just his shadow and his laugh vanishing from sight. It was just like when they'd play and hide when she approached. Just like old times. It was a shame there wasn't a second story for her to watch from.

But there was the roof, she realised. 'Keep on playing,' she said dreamily, before wandering up. She climbed with a bit of difficulty but the roof was comfortable and she sat, watching the sun and her husband, now hitting the ball at a tree. His strikes were clumsy. They all hit the tree but they bounced in all direction: they hit the door, the wall, himself – but the ball kept on going. Kept on bouncing.

She could just see Keiichi hitting it back.

Just like their happy family.

Her neck itched. She scratched it. The ball bounced high. The shadow vanished.

Her throat clenched. Her heart skipped a beat. A flash of terror passed through her. The shadow gone – meant –

'Come back!' she shrieked, standing, meaning to chase the shadow. It never worked, but desperation to cling to that dream was enough to make her try again anyhow. In her dreams that scream would be drowned in her clenched throat and outside it would be swallowed by the swarming people. But this was their house. It was only her and Ichirou to hear and he heard it.

Perhaps for the first time, he heard it. And he turned to the tree, looking for a fleeing shadow she might have caught.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Oiishi hijacked a place in this chapter. To be exact, the end. :D

* * *

 **Parasites in their Mind**  
 _Chapter 4_

The police came. Ichirou was hitting the ball against the tree again. It had splintered under the blows. They were rather bewildered, when they pointed out the body of his wife and he simply said she was watching.

'Perhaps she sees our son as well,' he said, his voice full of sorrow. 'He…died a few weeks ago.'

They offered their condolences by voice, but in mind they were suspicious. Was it grief that had swallowed him so much so he didn't notice she hadn't moved since she fell? Because a neighbour had seen her fall and called the ambulance. And they had called the police.

He didn't like the idea of going with them though. 'Too many conspiracy theories,' he muttered, wrenching himself free and striking the ball again. There was an audible crack. 'Lifting the casket of my son's coffin. Of his friends' coffins – and who knows if they even _got_ coffins, and what sort of friends they were –'

The ramblings of a deranged man, they thought. They were ignorant of the context.

 **.**

Oiishi heard the story through the grapevine. When the man was sedated and convinced his wife is not asleep but dead, he wondered if it was suicide. It might have been, but she had a contusion that looked more like a ball had hit her in the head.

It wasn't the first suicide from a person associated with Hinamizawa, and it wasn't the first unadmitted murder either. The entire case series was a confusing one, but possibly it didn't matter.

The autopsy for Maebara Aiko had revealed scratch marks as well. Her behaviour hadn't been consistent with an L5 though – albeit the testimony was given largely by the husband and couldn't be reliable. Other relatives had been questioned, but they only knew the tragedy had struck them both hard. And it was hard: to lose your only son at such an age. Oiishi had lost less than that: a father figure and a best friend.

But at least he could chase his murderer – still, even though the Sonozaki family was in disarray and their line of heads all dead. Abnormal, all of it, but slowly a picture had begun to form. A cleanup of the Irie clinic had revealed some things. Namely documents on the HInamizawa Syndrome and a cleanup operation that explain why Hinamizawa had so neatly been done away with before their inhabitants lost their minds.

Too bad they hadn't managed to develop a vaccine before that happened. Too bad there wasn't much that could be done about the people who'd left, the people who'd associated, the people who were connected to Hinamizawa a few generations back. They could draw lines that only went so far, and there were many, like the Maebaras, who hadn't been there for very long.

Maybe, if they'd files on Maebara Keiichi that confirmed the L5 stage of the Hinamizawa Syndrome as the cause of his acute heart failure and death, they could have been more suspicious. But that was just a wild accusation on his part. Tragic, yes. Suspect…not necessarily. What had been suspect was the whole Sonozaki twin business. That had done his head in for a week until they got the names and records as straight as they could make them.

And why the twin that lived in Okinomiya developed the syndrome and not the one in the thick of it was another confusing thing. She wasn't special. Not according to the records they'd siphoned off the clinic anyway. That was Furude Rika: queen carrier. As if the dead of one child doomed so many – but that was the drama playing out right in front of him.

 **.**

It was one drama after another. He felt he'd just accepted his son's death and now his wife was dead as well. And all of it was shrouded in conspiracy. Keiichi had died of acute heart failure but that made little sense. A shock, yes. A heart _attack_ , yes. Dying from something related to the torture, yes.

And then Aiko. She'd been watching him hit the ball. Probably, it reminded her of when he and Keiichi would play baseball together. He'd aim and hit a solid hit and Keiichi would miss and the ball would wind up bouncing off something – or hitting something. Like a window. He broke a few windows.

Grief had distanced them. The desire to try and cope by themselves had distanced them. Perhaps if they'd only talked –

And frustration welled up inside of him along with tears. He wanted the bat in his hands again. To hit the ball, watch it smack into something solid, hear it thump and not hear a scream after it.

He couldn't, though. He was tied down. In a holding room one night; in this bright but sterile one the next.

And the shadows were bright. Too bright. Too uncomfortable. he tried to close his eyes to them but Keiichi was there, throat dripping blood, face covered in it, eyes horrified, staring at him –

Scared of _him_?

All he'd ever done was strike him on the cheek and once: that they they'd realised where they'd gone, drifting away from each other, not paying attention.

Aiko was there, suddenly. She was bleeding from her head. There was a large bruise and she touched it gently, then stared at him. Her face wasn't afraid. Rather, it was accusing. Blaming.

His fault?

He woke up twitching in his restraints.

'Interesting predicament you're in,' said a voice. Oiishi, standing there, observing him calmly.

 **.**

It was an interesting predicament, that they were all in. a mix of science, science-fiction and fact and little of it could be proven. There was too much power monopoly, and too many secrets taken to the grave. He'd tried to use the newly inserted weak link in Hinamizawa but it had amounted to an innocent death in the end.

And yet, looking at the world going on now, he wondered if it really was innocent, or an avoidable death. By logic, if Maebara Keiichi hadn't passed away that July third, his parents wouldn't have fallen into a disarray of grief. His mother might not have been on the roof. Might not have been struck with the ball, might not have fallen.

Or they could have died in the gas leak like everybody else in Hinamizawa. Or they'd have been taken by the syndrome there, like the Sonozaki twin. Maybe even like Furude Rika: the knife used to stab her had only one set of fingerprints: her own.

It could have clever hiding, but the body had been well concealed as well. The blood not so well, but they'd taken a while to think of the carpet. They had taken a while to think of all the possibilities. The only reason he'd leapt upon the Sonozakis so fast was because he'd already suspected them, and this syndrome wouldn't even let that suspicion stay in peace.

Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, the syndrome wasn't considered court-worthy evidence as of yet. So anyone incarcerated with murder would be locked away. Anyone suspected to have lost their minds would be stuck in an institution. Anyone they thought they could fix would be patched up and sent home. He could already imagine all the chaos it would cause. And he could see the chaos it was already causing.

So…interesting predicament, yes. And that was a poor emotional descriptor but emotions were a confounder in this case. So were eye-witness reports. Couldn't trust a word because there were hallucinations going all round.

'Boy, oh boy.' He shook his head again. 'What a mess. Don't you think?'

But there wasn't really much of a point having a conversation. Hallucinations were confounders. Emotions were confounders. The truth itself was a confounder. He felt like a cigarette.

It didn't help that the WHO didn't consider it a real medical disaster so they couldn't clear anything up. All they had were papers that were proving themselves in front of their very eyes. This one was rather tame, all things considered. A lot less blood. Not many people noticed. After all, it was the tragic couple that had lost their son. Most of the eccentrics had been lost in that. He wasn't expecting anything, honestly. It probably was kinder to let him claw his throat out and die. He wondered if the restraints would lead to another acute heart failure. Because he couldn't claw out his throat. Or maybe it was the shock from the hallucination. Trauma induced hallucination. He'd just told Keiichi Maebara about finding Sonozaki Mion's body in the well – the Mion that was Shion, but they'd only realised that after, after he was dead and Hinamizawa was gone. But that could have reminded him of the torture chamber. Of his helplessness, strapped to that table. Of whatever sadistic ritual that was to be carried out with his body, interrupted just before the first mark could be made.

He remembered a man pushing him away from a thief after the war. A thief that had stolen half a bag of grain for her family: a pittance, but his orders had been to chase her. And this man had smacked him down and told him to make his own decision.

'Bit hard to do that with gods and demons and parasite theories,' he said thoughtfully. But he undid the restraints around the arms anyway. 'But there's your choice.'

His bone given, he went for some coffee. The man was practically asleep anyway. Maybe he hadn't even heard. Either way, that out was there if he needed it.

He didn't see Maebara Keiichi or the Sonozaki Shion that was actually Mion die from their symptoms. But he'd seen ones thereafter. Scratching out their throat in interrogation, following some hallucination and stepping off a ledge or into a deep body of water. It was a killer, that syndrome: a murderer in many ways: a homicidal maniac. It was too bad they couldn't grab the perpetrator and lock it up. As a medical thing, it wasn't a policeman's job at all. But he was chasing a mystery he couldn't let go of, and that was why he followed it. Even when the government was clearly trying to hush something up.

 **.**

He stretched out his hands. Aiko slapped them away. Keiichi just backed away, arms coming up to his throat, to his face obscuring him. Fear. Cold. They rolled into each other. What had he done? Where had he gone wrong? Those shrieks. Those screams. He was the guilty one and he'd forced it all on his son, forced the blame on him. That feeling choked him like bile, burning his throat and blocking it all in one.

And Aiko was there: her eyes bloodshot and her head with a lump. She drew away from him too as he reached again and he stared at his own hands. There was nothing odd about them. Not the hands. It was what he held: a gun in one hand, a bat in the other.

His own scream was lost in a gargle.

 **.**

Acute heart failure. It must run in the family, the doctors thought. They'd been informed of the son. And now it was the father. A father who'd gone mad with grief, the extent to which was unknown. Had it been an accident when the ball had struck his wife on the head? Or had it been deliberate. Who knew? Who would ever know? They were just another family of HInamizawa and in a few years to come, only the close family who held the funeral for them would remember.

After all, Hinamizawa was buried, and Maebara Keiichi as well. And whatever truth had escaped being written down, whatever truth still refused to come into light, whatever answers everybody sought but was simply unable to find.

Oiishi wondered when his turn would come. If it did. But why wouldn't it? It seemed everyone connected to that place carried a parasite in his mind. Shion who was Mion who'd only been there for a few months, spread over a year and a bit. The Maebaras, who'd been there for less than a year in all. Tomitake who'd visited four times a year for the last five years – a total of twenty days. All of them reached L5. All of them had clawed at their throat: the defining symptom of that stage. He'd been there longer, drinking with his friend, doing his job, investigating the murders, investigating the Sonozakis, investigating the Syndome…

He was definitely carrying a parasite in his mind, like everyone else who'd breathed the air and soil of Hinamizawa.


End file.
